Expert answer:Administration and Politics Dichotomy
Expert answer:Woodrow Wilson once said, “Although politics sets the task for administration, it should not be suffered to manipulate its offices.”The issues of politics and administration dichotomy first raised by Woodrow Wilson continue to generate debate among scholars of public administration in modern time.While some think Wilson’s idea was useful, others reject the idea as impossible.In a 2-3 page paper, and in your opinion, is that distinction practical and workable?What are the advantages and disadvantages of using such a dichotomy today as a way to advance that field of study? Support your case with examples.In order to write a convincing essay, review this essay by Norton Long – there is an extensive summary of Long’s essay in this week as well.
norton_article.pdf
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Power and Administration
Author(s): Norton E. Long
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Public Administration Review, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn, 1949), pp. 257-264
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Society for Public Administration
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/972337 .
Accessed: 30/01/2012 11:23
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Blackwell Publishing and American Society for Public Administration are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Public Administration Review.
http://www.jstor.org
Power
and
Administration
By NORTONE. LONG
Professor of Political Science
Western Reserve University
I
T HERE is no more forlorn spectacle in the
administrative world than an agency
and a program possessed of statutory
life, armed with executive orders, sustained in
the courts, yet stricken with paralysis and deprived of power. An object of contempt to its
enemies and of despair to its friends.
The lifeblood of administration is power.
Its attainment, maintenance, increase, dissipation, and loss are subjects the practitioner
and student can ill afford to neglect. Loss of
realism and failure are almost certain consequences. This is not to deny that important
parts of public administration are so deeply
entrenched in the habits of the community, so
firmly supported by the public, or so clearly
necessary as to be able to take their power
base for granted and concentrate on the
purely professional side of their problems.
But even these islands of the blessed are not
immune from the plague of politics, as witness the fate of the hapless Bureau of Labor
Statistics and the perennial menace of the
blind 5 per cent across-the-board budget cut.
Perhaps Carlyle’s aphorism holds here, “The
healthy know not of their health but only the
sick.” To stay healthy one needs to recognize
that health is a fruit, not a birthright. Power
is only one of the considerations that must be
weighed in administration, but of all it is the
most overlooked in theory and the most dangerous to overlook in practice.
The power resources of an administrator or
an agency are not disclosed by a legal search
of titles and court decisions or by examining
appropriations or budgetary allotments. Legal
authority and a treasury balance are necessary
but politically insufficient bases of administration. Administrative rationality requires a
257
critical evaluation of the whole range of complex and shifting forces on whose support, acquiescence, or temporary impotence the power
to act depends.
Analysis of the sources from which power
is derived and the limitations they impose is
as much a dictate of prudent administration
as sound budgetary procedure. The bankruptcy that comes from an unbalanced power
budget has consequences far more disastrous
than the necessity of seeking a deficiency appropriation. The budgeting of power is a
basic subject matter of a realistic science of
administration.
It may be urged that for all but the top
hierarchy of the administrative structure the
question of power is irrelevant. Legislative
authority and administrative orders suffice.
Power adequate to the function to be performed flows down the chain of command.
Neither statute nor executive order, however,
confers more than legal authority to act.
Whether Congress or President can impart the
substance of power as well as the form depends
upon the line-up of forces in the particular
case. A price control law wrung from a reluctant Congress by an amorphous and unstable
combination of consumer and labor groups is
formally the same as a law enacting a support
price program for agriculture backed by the
disciplined organizations of farmers and their
congressmen. The differences for the scope and
effectiveness of administration are obvious.
The Presidency, like Congress, responds to
and translates the pressures that play upon it.
The real mandate contained in an Executive
order varies with the political strength of the
group demand embodied in it, and in the context of other group demands.
Both Congress and President do focus the
258
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
general political energies of the community
and so are considerably more than mere means
for transmitting organized pressures. Yet
power is not concentrated by the structure
of government or politics into the hands of a
leadership with a capacity to budget it among
a diverse set of administrative activities. A
picture of the Presidency as a reservoir of authority from which the lower echelons of administration draw life and vigor is an idealized distortion of reality.
A similar criticism applies to any like claim
for an agency head in his agency. Only in varying degrees can the powers of subordinate officials be explained as resulting from the chain
of command. Rarely is such an explanation a satisfactory account of the sources of
power.
To deny that power is derived exclusively
from superiors in the hierarchy is to assert that
subordinates stand in a feudal relation in
which to a degree they fend for themselves and
acquire support peculiarly their own. A structure of interests friendly or hostile, vague
and general or compact and well-defined,
encloses each significant center of administrative discretion. This structure is an important determinant of the scope of possible
action. As a source of power and authority
it is a competitor of the formal hierarchy.
Not only does political power flow in from
the sides of an organization, as it were; it also
flows up the organization to the center from
the constituent parts. When the staff of the
Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion
advised a hard-pressed agency to go out and
get itself some popular support so that the
President could afford to support it, their action reflected the realities of power rather
than political cynicism.
It is clear that the American system of politics does not generate enough power at any
focal point of leadership to provide the conditions for an even partially successful divorce of politics from administration. Subordinates cannot depend on the formal chain of
command to deliver enough political power to
permit them to do their jobs. Accordingly they
must supplement the resources available
through the hierarchy with those they can
muster on their own, or accept the conse-
REVIEW
quences in frustration-a course itself not without danger. Administrative rationality demands that objectives be determined and
sights set in conformity with a realistic appraisal of power position and potential.
II
THE theory of administration has neglected
the problem of the sources and adequacy of
power, in all probability because of a distaste
for the disorderliness of American political
life and a belief that this disorderliness is
transitory. An idealized picture of the British
parliamentary system as a Platonic form to be
realized or approximated has exerted a baneful fascination in the field. The majority
party with a mandate at the polls and a
firmly seated leadership in the Cabinet seems
to solve adequately the problem of the supply of power necessary to permit administration to concentrate on the fulfillment of accepted objectives. It is a commonplace that
the American party system provides neither a
mandate for a platform nor a mandate for a
leadership.
Accordingly, the election over, its political
meaning must be explored by the diverse
leaders in the executive and legislative
branches. Since the parties have failed to discuss issues, mobilize majorities in their terms,
and create a working political consensus on
measures to be carried out, the task is left for
others-most prominently the agencies concerned. Legislation passed and powers granted
are frequently politically premature. Thus the
Council of Economic Advisers was given legislative birth before political acceptance of its
functions existed. The agencies to which tasks
are assigned must devote themselves to the creation of an adequate consensus to permit administration. The mandate that the parties
do not supply must be attained through public relations and the mobilization of group
support. Pendleton Herring and others have
shown just how vital this support is for agency
action.
The theory that agencies should confine
themselves to communicating policy suggestions to executive and legislature, and refrain
from appealing to their clientele and the public, neglects the failure of the parties to provide either a clear-cut decision as to what they
POWER
AND
ADMINISTRATION
should do or an adequately mobilized political support for a course of action. The bureaucracy under the American political system has a large share of responsibility for the
public promotion of policy and even more in
organizing the political basis for its survival
and growth. It is generally recognized that
the agencies have a special competence in the
technical aspects of their fields which of necessity gives them a rightful policy initiative.
In addition, they have or develop a shrewd
understanding of the politically feasible in
the group structure within which they work.
Above all, in the eyes of their supporters and
their enemies they represent the institutionalized embodiment of policy, an enduring organization actually or potentially capable of
mobilizing power behind policy. The survival
interests and creative drives of administrative
organizations combine with clientele pressures to compel such mobilization. The party
system provides no enduring institutional
representation for group interest at all comparable to that of the bureaus of the Department of Agriculture. Even the subject matter
committees of Congress function in the
shadow of agency permanency.
The bureaucracy is recognized by all interested groups as a major channel of representation to such an extent that Congress rightly
feels the competition of a rival. The weakness
in party structure both permits and makes
necessary the present dimensions of the political activities of the administrative branchpermits because it fails to protect administration from pressures and fails to provide adequate direction and support, makes necessary
because it fails to develop a consensus on a
leadership and a program that makes possible
administration on the basis of accepted decisional premises.
Agencies and bureaus more or less perforce
are in the business of building, maintaining,
and increasing their political support. They
lead and in large part are led by the diverse
groups whose influence sustains them. Frequently they lead and are themselves led in
conflicting directions. This is not due to a
dull-witted incapacity to see the contradictions in their behavior but is an almost inevitable result of the contradictory nature of
their support.
259
Herbert Simon has shown that administrative rationality depends on the establishment
of uniform value premises in the decisional
centers of organization. Unfortunately, the
value premises of those forming vital elements of political support are often far from
uniform. These elements are in Barnard’s
and Simon’s sense “customers” of the organization and therefore parts of the organization
whose wishes are clothed with a very real authority. A major and most time-consuming
aspect of administration consists of the wide
range of activities designed to secure enough
“customer” acceptance to survive and, if fortunate, develop a consensus adequate to program formulation and execution.
To varying degrees, dependent on the
breadth of acceptance of their programs, officials at every level of significant discretion
must make their estimates of the situation,
take stock of their resources, and plan accordingly. A keen appreciation of the real
components of their organization is the beginning of wisdom. These components will be
found to stretch far beyond the government
payroll. Within the government they will encompass Congress, congressmen, committees,
courts, other agencies, presidential advisers,
and the President. The Aristotelian analysis
of constitutions is equally applicable and
equally necessary to an understanding of administrative organization.
The broad alliance of conflicting groups
that makes up presidential majorities scarcely
coheres about any definite pattern of objectives, nor has it by the alchemy of the party
system had its collective power concentrated
in an accepted leadership with a personal
mandate. The conciliation and maintenance
of this support is a necessary condition of
the attainment and retention of office involving, as Madison so well saw, “the spirit of
party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.” The President must in large part be, if not all things
to all men, at least many things to many men.
As a consequence, the contradictions in his
power base invade administration. The often
criticized apparent cross-purposes of the Roosevelt regime cannot be put down to inept administration until the political facts are
weighed. Were these apparently self-defeating
260
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
measures reasonably related to the general
maintenance of the composite majority of the
Administration? The first objective-ultimate
patriotism apart-of the administrator is the
attainment and retention of the power on
which his tenure of office depends. This is the
necessary pre-condition for the accomplishment of all other objectives.
The same ambiguities that arouse the scorn
of the naive in the electoral campaigns of the
parties are equally inevitable in administration and for the same reasons. Victory at the
polls does not yield either a clear-cut grant of
power or a unified majority support for a
coherent program. The task of the Presidency
lies in feeling out the alternatives of policy
which are consistent with the retention and
increase of the group support on which the
Administration rests. The lack of a budgetary
theory (so frequently deplored) is not due to
any incapacity to apply rational analysis to
the comparative contribution of the various
activities of government to a determinate
hierarchy of purposes. It more probably stems
from a fastidious distaste for the frank recognition of the budget as a politically expedient
allocation of resources. Appraisal in terms of
their political contribution to the Administration provides almost a sole common denominator between the Forest Service and the Bureau of Engraving.
Integration of the administrative structure
through an over-all purpose in terms of which
tasks and priorities can be established is an
emergency phenomenon. Its realization, only
partial at best, has been limited to war and
the extremity of depression. Even in wartime
the Farm Bureau Federation, the American
Federation of Labor, the Congress of Industrial
Organizations, the National Association of
Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce,
and a host of lesser interests resisted coordination of themselves and the agencies concerned with their interests. A Presidency temporarily empowered by intense mass popular
support acting in behalf of a generally accepted and simplified purpose can, with great
difficulty, bribe, cajole, and coerce a real
measure of joint action. The long-drawn-out
battle for conversion and the debacle of orderly reconversion underline the difficulty of
attaining, and the transitory nature of, popu-
REVIEW
larly based emergency power. Only in crises
are the powers of the Executive nearly adequate to impose a common plan of action on
the executive branch, let alone the economy.
In ordinary times the manifold pressures
of our pluralistic society work themselves out
in accordance with the balance of forces prevailing in Congress and the agencies. Only to
a limited degree is the process subject to responsible direction or review by President or
party leadership.
The program of the President cannot be a
Gosplan for the government precisely because
the nature of his institutional and group support gives him insufficient power. The personal unity of the Presidency cannot perform
the function of Hobbes’ sovereign since his
office lacks the authority of Hobbes’ contract.
Single headedness in the executive gives no
assurance of singleness of purpose. It only insures that the significant pressures in a society
will be brought to bear on one office. Monarchy solves the problem of giving one plan
to a multitude only when the plenitude of its
authority approaches dictatorship. Impatient
social theorists in all ages have turned to the
philosopher king as a substitute for consensus.
Whatever else he may become, it is difficult to
conceive of the American president ruling as
a philosopher king, even with the advice of
the Executive Office. The monarchical solution to the administrative problems posed by
the lack of a disciplined party system capable
of giving firm leadership and a program to
the legislature is a modern variant of the
dreams of the eighteenth century savants and
well nigh equally divorced from a realistic appraisal of social realities.
Much of administrative thought, when it
does not assume the value of coordination for
coordination’s sake, operates on the assumption that there must be something akin to
Rousseau’s volonte generale in administration
to which the errant volonte de tous of the bureaus can and should be made to conform.
This will-o’-the-wisp was made the object of
an illuminating search by Pendleton Herring
in his Public Administration and the Public
Interest. The answer for Rousseau was enlightened dictatorship or counting the votes.
The administrative equivalent to the latter is
the resultant of the relevant pressures, as Her-
POWER
AND
ADMINISTRATION
ring shows. The first alternative seems to require at least the potency of the British Labour party and elsewhere has needed the disciplined organization of a fascist, nazi, or
communist party to provide the power and
consensus necessary to coordinate the manifold activities of government to a common
plan.
Dictatorship, as Sigmund Neumann has observed, is a substitute for institutions which is
required to fill the vacuum when traditional
institutions break down. Force supplies the
compulsion and guide to action in place of
the normal routines of unconscious habit. Administrative organizations, however much they
may appear the creations of art, are institutions produced in history and woven in the
web of social relationships that gives them life
and being. They present the same refractory
material to the hand of the political artist as
the rest of society of which they form a part.
Just as the economists have attempted to
escape the complexities of institutional reality
by taking refuge in the frictionless realm of
theory, so some students of administration,
following their lead, have seen in the application of the doctrine of opportunity costs a
clue to a science of administration. Valuable
as this may be in a restricted way, Marx has
more light to throw on the study of institutions. It is in the dynamics and interrelations
of institutions that we have most hope of describing and therefore learning to control administrative behavior.
III
of
difficulty
coordinating government
agencies lies not only in the fact that bureaucratic organizations are institutions having
survival interests which may conflict with
their rational adaptation to over-all purpose,
but even more in their having roots in society. Coordination of the varied activities of
a modern government almost of necessity involves a substantial degree of coordination of
the economy. Coordination of government
agencies involves far more …
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
How it works
- Paste your instructions in the instructions box. You can also attach an instructions file
- Select the writer category, deadline, education level and review the instructions
- Make a payment for the order to be assignment to a writer
- Download the paper after the writer uploads it
Will the writer plagiarize my essay?
You will get a plagiarism-free paper and you can get an originality report upon request.
Is this service safe?
All the personal information is confidential and we have 100% safe payment methods. We also guarantee good grades